A fisherman rows a boat at the Fulbari wetland area on the outskirts of Siliguri on December 4, 2020. (Photo by DIPTENDU DUTTA / AFP)
IN strikingly blunt remarks last week, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said humans were waging a “suicidal war” on planet Earth. He warned that unless efforts were stepped up, the fires, floods and cyclones causing widespread problems in recent times will become the “new normal”.
In a BBC interview, he warned that nature always strikes back “with gathering force and fury”, and called on nations to coalesce around a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero.
He also underscored the biodiversity crisis, often called the flip side of the climate crisis coin. Indeed, the need to address the climate and biodiversity crises with an integrated approach was underlined in a recent report by the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC).
That report also detailed why contributions of nature or nature-based solutions (NbS) deserve a more central place in policy-making to reverse climate change and biodiversity loss.
